Aussie Middle Grade Series Travels
The Extremely Weird Thing That Happened in Huggabie Falls, the first title in a middle grade series by Australian author Adam Cece, has sold to a number of publishers including Bayard (France), Salani (Italy), Lannoo (Netherlands), Castor de Papel (Portugal), and Duomo (Spain). Text Publishing in Australia controls all rights to the book, which will be published in Australia in April. The book is about a boy named Kipp Kindle and the adventure he goes on with his friends; along the way they meet vampire bats and a Portuguese-speaking lab rat.
Finnish Novel Moves to Germany
Penguin Verlag/Random House has acquired German rights to the Finnish novel The Light Behind the Eyes by Tommi Kinnuen. The book, which was featured in our Behind the Bestseller column and has sold in a number of other foreign rights deals, was published in Finland in 2016 by WSOY. (Bonniers Rights Finland controls all rights.) The novel is about a girl who is sent to a school for the blind in Helsinki.
Italian Mystery Series Goes Global
The bestselling Italian mystery series written by Ben Pastor featuring detective Martin Bora has begun to draw a swarm of international buyers, with recent sales for various books in the series going to Alianza (Spain), Clubo do Autor (Portugal) and the U.K.-based Bitter Lemon Press (for world English rights). The 10-book series has sold over half a million copies in Italy since launching in 1999. The 11th novel in the series, Night Of the Shooting Stars, recently sold to Sellerio in Italy. The author lives in Italy and writes her novels in English. Italy's PNLA Literary controls all rights to the series, which is set during World War II. The author credits the success of recent World War II movies like Dunkirk and Darkest Hour with raising interest in the series.
